The bottom line was that Republicans could retain the party’s more libertarian policy recommendations by just ditching social and cultural conservatism. The recommendations on the mechanics of running a party, including data-gathering and voter contact, were cursory at best.
Can we get a real Republican autopsy this time?
What went wrong? How were candidates actually recruited in this cycle? Was charisma even a factor?
Why did Republicans overperform in New York, where districts were drawn by a court to be “fair,” compared with states where Republicans were in charge of gerrymandering? Does this indicate that the party doesn’t really know who its voters are, or how to communicate to them?
[MBD raises some good points in this article, but I’d strongly disagree with his takeaway that the 2013 autopsy simply recommended ditching conservatism. It emphasized in detail the need to expand voter contacts, contextualizing the conservative agenda in local-target messaging rather than national messaging, and more. I wrote extensively about that in my book Going Red, in fact. — Ed]
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